Review of I'm Standing on a Million Lives

There was an attempt. An attempt at being deep and nuanced, and doing something new, but while the intention is commendable, the execution is shabby and boring. Almost clumsy. I don't care about the surprise twist by the end, so I shall judge it based on what the show presented through the 12 episodes, and, honestly, what was presented was an aggressively mid, low production value product with immemorable music, mediocre animation + character designs, skin-deep dialogues, and 'moral challenges' (like that in episode 6) that a middle schooler at their first creative writing assignment could come up with. A series of poor ideas poorlyexecuted.

To reinforce the point, this anime is sometimes the personification of the "I'm 14 and this is deep" meme - an immature kid pretending to be a thoughtful grown-up. They try to touch on some delicate topics like bullying, illness, or religious tolerance (lol), but they do so in such a dismissive, childish, and shallow way that it feels like reading a Twitter thread by some California schoolgirl talking about capitalism. And no, the fact the MCs are kids themselves doesn't justify the shallowness of the dialogues in the slightest - anime oftentimes portray super smart kids coming up with extremely complex thoughts children their age typically don't have, as per the Most Writers Are Adults trope, but even if we assume the show tried being 'dumb' on purpose to portray the kind of thoughts a kid could realistically have, it STILL fails at that. It simply looks and is half-baked.

Now, a quick summary. The plot... the plot is whatever. Boring.
The characters. The character arcs are filled with the usual uninteresting cliches, and while they do manage somewhat to avoid the pitfall of the personality stereotypes, that doesn't do the show any favor, really. For the aforementioned reasons, I doubt anyone with an actual chronic condition is going to see themselves in Kasue, or a victim of bullying is going to empathize with Yuka, etc. - their motivations and sad backstoriesTM are, again, just too shallow and cliche to be taken seriously.

That said, it's a mediocre fantasy anime. Worth watching it to kill time, but don't expect much.